Monday, December 21, 2009

If you're already subscribed via RSS nothing should change for your feedreader after I transfer it Tuesday morning to the new domain. I'm not 100% sure if that's the case for email though.

I look forward to continuing the journey with you there!

Reflection
My first post on March 22, 2008 was entitled A New Flight. This was after I had graduated from the University of North Texas with a Master of Science in Information Science, but I was still employed in payroll & human resources and not a Real Librarian yet.

Let's see some of what I had to say:

I still don't think of myself as a 'real' blogger because, for the time being, I don't have practical deep and profound brain things inside my head about the medical library profession since I'm not actually in it yet. I'm full of theory as any new graduate who is considered young by our profession's standards should be, but old enough to keep quiet and observe for now without expounding in public.

I didn't do a very good job about that keeping quiet part or expounding in public part for very long did I?

I'll likely continue to not do a good job at that and, quite honestly, I still don't think of myself as a 'real' blogger. I like investigating things and talking about them, and there's still so much to explore in the new year and decade ahead. Onward!

Thursday, December 17, 2009

The problem with PubMed searching is resolved. The database is current as of yesterday 12/16/2009; it will be updated as soon as possible.

**** PUBMED-ALERTS NOTICE ****

In my inbox about an hour ago, no sign of any RSS alerts in feed reader yet

The use of PubMed occasionally results in unexpected error messages. For example: when you search for a known pmid, you may get the message "Wrong UID 20011576". While we work to resolve this, you may not be able to use PubMed for some searching.

**** PUBMED-ALERTS NOTICE ****

You are receiving this message as a subscribed member of PUBMED-ALERTS, an announcement service available from the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM).

Do not reply to this message. To contact NLM, write to NLM Customer Service at custserv@nlm.nih.gov or click "Write to the Help Desk" on any PubMed screen.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

This is my intended final post of substance (maybe this week's Friday Foolery, we'll see) over here.

Do Not Panic.*

As this year and Blogger gig comes to a close there may be another ending to report as well. If you're not already familiar with the Clinical Reader saga you can see the bottom of the original post or this summary: I blogged to call out false endorsements and images weirdness, they threatened to sue me on Twitter unless I took down my post, all sorts of weirdness occurred, and librarians are a pack of rabid wolves.

Here's what things looked like on November 28, 2009 according to Google:

Since then, there's been this:

Some subpages are still publicly accessible but dropping off the Google radar like flies, which still holds 'clinical reader twitter' steady as a suggested search term and has since at least September.

Speaking of Clinical Reader Twitter, another related Twitter account has been deleted (@allan_marks) though the highly inactive @Clinical_Reader still references it as a last tweet:

If anyone sees the publisher press release about that or the latest Clinical Reader Twitter account/website incarnation, do let me know.

Even if this strange story is now over and done, it showed us how ephemeral and difficult it is to efficiently reference and archive social media discourse. This will live on as a case study submitted by Marcus Banks as part of his chapter for a grey literature book that will be published in early 2010. I agree with Marcus' point that

it [Twitter, Facebook, etc.] is also not meaningless, from both an evidentiary and anthropological standpoint. This is how many people are communicating today.

QuoteURL was of great assistance in capturing deleted tweets in June yet it is already broken, TwapperKeeper and related services are helping to archive hashtags today, but what will be the WayBackMachine of social media discourse tomorrow?

I had not seen nor heard the bells in the top picture for nearly, if not exactly, 20 years until last night. There are now conflicting stories between my mom & her sister (the one who sent them to me) as to their whereabouts during that time I won't get into. 'Tis the season for family drama!

I, my mom & her sisters, and my grandpa all grew up with them being rung for Christmas. The original owner was my great-grandmother, born in Thorold Ontario (Canadian, eh? Surprise!) in the 1870s. The story is she was the only girl in town to have her own horse & sleigh, which probably used up all the 'I want a pony!' karma in the family because none of us have had horses since.

I went poking around and realized these are properly called shaft chimes since they each have 3 clappers and are attached to the poles of the sleigh like this lady had. We all grew up calling them sleigh bells but it's not like we central Californians ever went riding around in a sleigh to know any better. We'll work on a video to share later because they sound absolutely nothing like jingle bells, more like handbells on crack that immediately get your attention.

The International Harvester toy truck our son is playing with in the second picture also belonged to my grandpa as a boy and is another steadfast family Christmas tradition. I have no idea what the light was doing that night because the little antique Stieff teddy bear driver is not holy.

Friday, December 4, 2009

This gets a little naughty at 2:00-2:06 (and nothing that would trigger the not safe for work alarms compared to some of the crap people post on Facebook), just a warning. Otherwise this remix is obnoxiously catchy and medically compelling:

If YouTube is blocked at work, you'd rather not risk it, or you're a vegetarian full of love and passion I also bring you the Bacon=Freedom, Lettuce=Love, Tomato=Passion scented BLT Candles.

In my philosophic musings I asked myself what is better than a BLT? As much as I try, I can't eat a BLT at every meal and I can't grill bacon 24 hours a day. Then I asked myself: 'What is the meaning of Bacon? What is the meaning of Lettuce? What is the meaning of Tomato?' What is the meaning of life? Then the epiphany: BLT-scented votive candles! Isn't it obvious?